Men without shirts

When it rains, it pours, batfans. Follow the ongoing trail o' links in its latest twists and turns:

First, a return visit to Man's Adventure yielded only one new illustration, but one of the homo-licious links to the right of the main text brought me to ...

Brian's Drive-In Theater, a spiffy site packed with tributes to B-movie stars and character actors, beefcake and cheesecake shots, film noir stars, beach movie cast members, and so much more. We're talking lavishly illustrated filmographies and links to DVDs, batfans. Pure gold! I dove straight into the section devoted to "Low-Budget Superheroes", where I found shots of Tom Tyler (the Phantom in the 1943 serial) and Reb Brown (Captain America in two low-budget 1979 movies), among others. Re Reb, if you love the lycra and the Cap as much as I do, you owe it to yourself to rent (as cheaply as possible) at least the first of his CA films. (I thiink the first one is the, ahem, "better" of the two, and features a nice bondage shot or two, but then it's been over 10 years since I saw either one). Come on: it may not exactly be standard issue, but how can you resist this... package...



... especially when you know this is what lies beneath that tight-fitting uniform:



And speaking of beefcake (and the bare flesh of superheroes), the same section of Brian's Drive-In also features a tribute to Van Williams, the very Green Hornet whose praises I was singing just two entries back. Here I found not only a dense collection of GH/Lone Ranger stuff but the first shirtless shots of Van I've ever seen; bear with me if I go overboard on posting these, but I'm beside myself with joy. Let us begin with a technicolor treasure in which not only the backdrop but Mr. Williams' entire body appears to be 100% airbrushed for your viewing pleasure:



Next, here he is doing a bit of yardwork. That's right: no matter how pumped you may be, you still have to break out the lawncare implements every now and then. May I fetch you a glass of iced tea, Mister Future Green Hornet, sir?



Finally, say hello to Captain Van (and his treasure of a chest):



I'll stop there, but trust me: Mr. Hornet seems to have been called upon to remove his shirt at least as often as Jim "Wild, Wild" West (though not in his crimefighting days, alas).

There are several other low-budget superheroes on the site, but we must move on to the obvious piece de resistance. In case you're wondering, there is a shirtless shot of Adam West, but to be honest, I've always been a little disappointed by that particular hairless wonder ever since I first saw it exposed in the final episode of the Batman series. No, the real treat on West's page is a link to video footage of a 1977 showdown between the (un)caped crusader and Jerry Lawler (in one of the least erotic Superman-based outfits of all time). Adam is wearing a bizarre but sexy all-black variation on the batsuit that seems to foreshadow the sort of ninja get-ups favored by Christian Bale in early sections of Batman Begins:



Okay, time to wrap this up before I sacrifice an entire evening of my life to photos of manly men baring their hairy, muscular chests.

All right, so it wouldn't be the first time. But still...